Friday, August 13, 2010

Goes to No More Mister Nice Blog's Steve M. This one requires a bit of background...previously, Steve bashed Newt Gingrich as a "rube" for foolishly inflating the magnitude of a 13-story building in lower Manhattan; I called him on it, arguing that Newt is no rube, but is better thought of as a charlatan. Now, in a post attacking Bill Kristol:

Well, now I see that in Kristol's column he writes:

Bloomberg never acknowledged that sane and tolerant people might object to a 15-story Islamic community center and mosque right next to Ground Zero.

Kristol, of course, grew up in New York -- for all I know, in a building taller than 13 or even 15 stories. He's a dishonest sleazebag, but he's no rube. So I have to conclude that it's probably Frank Luntz who's responsible for this massive skyscraper!!! meme.

Good catch!

By the way, while I have no idea whether Frank Luntz is actually involved in this particular snake-oil pitch, it is worth remembering that whenever you hear pols and hacks talking, there's a good chance that the language has in fact been polled and/or focus-group tested. Not always, by any means, and I've not seen good reporting that would allow any kind of estimate, but it is worth keeping in mind.

3 comments:

Neither Kristol nor Gingrich are rubes, they just act like it. Which is the difference between shameless demagogues and the rabble they hope to rouse - the demagogues know they're lying, but the rabble actually believe the agitpropagandists are telling the truth. Still, it's kind of sad that they need help from Frank Luntz to hoodwink the masses - the old school demagogues like Coughlin and Wallace wrote their own stuff.